The Dedication Test

David Schmaltz is a project manager in Takoma Park, Maryland.

  Career Development   New Practitioners   ProjectsAtWork  

Any training workshop hoping to better inform project practitioners or their executives should not be limited to easily digestible facts. Instead, it should encourage attendees to determine what it really is that they are pursuing. This upfront challenge may not satisfy everyone in the beginning, but it could delight them by the end.

The first part of this series — The Insurgent Strategy — considered how project practitioners might secure the training they need rather than the training their management insists they should want. It contrasted the popular notion that PM training should focus upon absorbing technical knowledge with the practical understanding that who the PMs discover they are has historically proven more useful. It proposed a benevolent insurgency which might not require permission to succeed. In this installment, I explain how to chase away students.

“If I can’t disappoint you today, I won’t be able to delight you tomorrow.”

The most significant test takes place before anyone sets foot in the training room, when the ‘teacher’ asks each prospective ‘student’ what they want to learn and why; what they want to be different as a result of attending the workshop, and how they’ll determine that difference.

I understand that not all ‘teachers’ give their ‘students&…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.